YMMV / God's Not Dead 2

• Designated Hero: While Grace's comment in class wasn't inappropriate, she was a teacher employed by a public, secular school who met with a student outside of class and preached a religion the student's parents didn't agree with to their presumably underage child. While this also isn't illegal, it is a much more gray area and can definitely be argued to be disrespectfully inappropriate. Even if the parents had shared her religion, they might have still objected to the unsupervised meeting out of school and/or a school employee preaching to their child, especially because Christians disagree on many issues-plus it could simply look suspicious.
• Don't Shoot the Message: Like the first film, a lot of Christians feel this way about the film. Possibly even more so, as the premise of the first had some potential, but the premise of the sequel is unbelievably stupid. When some Catholic news sites discovered that the writers of the film are Catholic like themselves and not Evangelicals, they gave a scathing review calling out the filmmakers' victimhood complex.
  John Mulderig: "...Taken as a whole, this reaffirmation of belief, though appropriate for most moviegoers, suffers from an off-key tone, a pervasive sense of victimhood and sometimes painful sentimentality."
  Sr. Rose Pacette: "As Catholic Christians we are a church called to live faith, hope and charity in the world — not create a fraternity of victims and prepare to take defensive action. It is most regrettable that the film reinforces this idea."
• Fan Nickname: Many people came up with a lot of funny tag lines or title names when they heard of the sequel:
  • Tagline:
    • He really isn't dead
    • This Time It's Personal
    • He Is Surely Alive!
    • He's Buried Alive!
    • The reckoning
    • Electric Boogaloo
    • The not-deadening
    • He's Feeling Better!
    • April Fools!
    • Tokyo Drift
    • Crucify THIS.
  • Titles:
    • God's still not dead
    • God's not deader
    • God: Not dead and loving it
    • Victim Complex: The Sequel
    • God's Not Gay
    • God's Still Alive
    • Faith/hollow argument to the first film's Faith/not dead, as well as the eventual prequel Faith/Zero.
• Faux Symbolism: The ACLU lawyer gets the parent of the child who asked the question to sign a paper with a blood red pen.
• Glurge: The way this movie portrays non-Christians as bad people, and Christians as invariably good, sends the message that other beliefs are malicious, beyond even simply being wrong. Then again, this movie was always intended as an exploitation piece.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In December of 2015, a Muslim New Jersey history teacher, Sireen Hashem, who claimed to have been prohibited from mentioning Islam or the Middle East in her classes, filed a lawsuit against her former workplace, saying she had been discriminated because of her faith when they fired her after she showed her class a video clip of Malala Yousafzai, who went on to earn the Nobel Peace Prize of 2015, showing how a scenario like God's Not Dead 2 would play out in real life - she's the one filing a lawsuit against her former employer.
  • Some reviewers of the first film joked that the reason Radisson was killed was not because it was supposed to give himself the chance at redemption, but God was essentially enacting an equivalent exchange as at the same time the Newsboys were praying with Amy over her cancer. The theory was that to cure Amy's cancer God needed to kill someone else, i.e. Radisson, but the reviewers usually brushed it off as after all cancer doesn't work that way and claimed it would be a really stupid idea. Come this film it is heavily suggested that Amy was cured because she became a Christian and suddenly that doesn't just sound like a joke theory anymore.
  • In March 2021, notable atheist YouTuber Telltale released audio of his daughter's health teacher essentially doing the thing that Grace is falsely accused of in this film: Proselytizing to her students. He and his daughter were subsequently subjected to backlash and bullying from the residents of the small West Virginia town they lived in, forcing them to accelerate their plans to move away.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The first movie has the son of Zeus as an atheist, now this one has a witch who has experienced the Salem Witch Trials as a devout Christian^note The actress, Melissa Joan Hart, really is one. once again in the middle of a Witch Hunt. EVERY critic points out the irony in this.
  • Who better to cast as the evil attorney that wants to prove that "God is dead" than The Devil himself, Ray Wise? Suddenly the trial becomes less "poorly executed Author Tract" and more an "evil scheme to cheese off God" (as some Christians believe atheism and other non-Christian views are Satanic, it's possible this was an intentional choice).
  • One of Ernie Hudson's most famous lines is from the Ghostbusters (1984): "If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe whatever you say". Come this film and many reviewers are thinking the only reason he is in this film is for a paycheck.
• Informed Wrongness: Yes and no. On the one hand, a teacher briefly mentioning a religious figure while answering a student's question in class is something only the absolutely absurd would try to make a big deal over, and they'd likely get nowhere in doing so. On the other hand, atheists and religious/spiritual non-Christians have no genuine kindness or even simple rationality to their credit, according to the movie. And while there was nothing wrong with Grace's comment in class, the movie seems to say that any parent/guardian who objected to their kid being religiously preached at by a public school teacher would be wrong and also that only a non-Christian would object to preaching of Christianity to their kid. In reality, Christian individuals have diverse beliefs, meaning the parents and teacher's religious views might differ in certain areas, and even if they didn't, some Christians do strongly believe in separation of church and state. If they wanted their kid to be exposed to religion at school/by a teacher, they'd either try to put them in a religious school or set up a meeting themselves between teacher and student outside of class.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Some atheist viewers seem to like Ray Wise's portrayal of a cartoonishly evil atheist simply for putting effort into his performance and adding some much-needed hammery to the movie.
• Narm:
  • The people defending the teacher are outside the courtroom chanting. They are not saying any bible verses, they are chanting the phrase "God's not dead, he is surely alive" line from the Newsboys song.
    • Also one of the protesters has his sign upside down.
  • The judge's gavel breaking when he charges Grace's lawyer with contempt.
  • The fact this film came out on April Fools' Day.
  • Also, the fact that this film features Ray Wise playing an evil and hammy crooked lawyer stereotype. Especially if you are familiar with Wise's performance as a just-as-hammy (but heroic) U.S. president in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. If you've played that game first, it can be hard to take Wise's performance in this film seriously with that in the back of your mind.
• Pandering to the Base: Just like the first movie, this film seems to do nothing but pander to the Christians with a persecution complex along with the belief that the Christian religion should be above the law.
• Paranoia Fuel: This film really amps up the persecution complex of Christians by having the trailers state how "THEY"^note Atheists. are out to get them, how Christianity is at war complete with a scene of the same pastor being arrested, and setting atheists up to be like an evil organization bent on destroying Christianity once and for all. At one point it even justifies this whole thing by insinuating that if Christians don't fight for their religion now, tomorrow they could be dragged through the streets and killed for believing. It's pretty unlikely in a country that is over 80% Christian, and that's ignoring that many atheists have a "live and let live" attitude or even defend one's right to freely worship their religion. Even those who have anti-religious/anti-theistic views don't advocate what happens in the film-they limit themselves to criticism, or legally preventing religious establishments.
• Sophomore Slump: Among people who both like and dislike the series, this entry tends to be regarded as the worst one. Fans tend to consider it to be too much of a re-tread of the first film, while anti-fans feel it turns the faults of the first film up to eleven; both camps also tend to regard it as being inferior to the third.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • The lead "evil atheist" refers to Christianity as an oppressive belief. Christians really have persecuted certain groups historically so it makes sense for someone to hold this view.
  • While cross-examining Brooke (the student who Grace helped convert to Christianity after her brother died), the “evil” ACLU lawyer points out that as a teacher, Grace was unqualified to give advice for Brooke’s personal problems and should have directed the latter to the school’s counselor.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: It is mentioned a couple of times that Brooke used to have an older brother who recently died right before the events of the film. However, there is absolutely no background information on him whatsoever, like what his name was, what kind of a person was he, and/or AT LEAST how he died.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Grace's lawyer is an atheist and she is a devout Christian. Despite their different views, practically nothing comes from this dynamic as he essentially agrees with everything she wants.
  • If the film just focused on the actual reason Grace was on trial to begin with, it could have been an interesting study on the limits between the separation of church and state. Instead it just completely turns around and becomes a case about proving Jesus' existence.
  • The Chinese kid who converts to Christianity subplot had some real potential behind it, and his dad had actual reasons to be mad: back home in China, at the very least being out and proudly religious (and that's any religion, not solely Christian) ain't good for your career prospects. If he (or his dad) worked in the Communist party, that's even worse. The kid could get himself relegated to the Chinese equivalent of Milton's basement office, if not booted out of a cushy lifestyle entirely. It completely explains why his dad would be so mad at him, since from the dad's perspective his son is throwing his life away. Yet they instead treat is as if it's solely because he's an atheist and atheists hate Christians.

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